López Obrador assures that Mexico will comply with “all the requirements” to recover category 1 in air safety

The control tower of Felipe Ángeles International Airport. Andrea Murcia (Cuartoscuro)

Mexico battles to recover the highest category in air safety.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador stated this Friday that the country will meet "all the requirements" to reverse the degradation imposed by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in May of last year.

However, after more than a year of work, the government has still not been able to convince US inspectors that it meets international aviation standards.

During last week's technical visit, new flaws were found that threaten to prolong this situation until at least the end of the year.

The Mexican president has been confident that the country will recover category 1, but has not dared to give dates.

“A review is being done, all the requirements are being met, and I hope there will be no problem,” he declared during his morning press conference.

Despite the optimism, López Obrador has charged against "international organizations."

"Not all of them are honest," he has said, referring to the reports of failures at the capital's airport.

On other occasions, the president has stated that behind the downgrade there was an attempt by the US to favor US airlines.

The cut means that Mexican companies cannot open new routes to their northern neighbor, their main international market.

López Obrador's statements come after the seventh technical visit carried out by the FAA at the request of Mexico to check progress.

These visits are intended to prepare the way for a new audit, in which the final decision would be made.

According to the Mexican Federal Civil Aviation Agency (AFAC), this "served as a preliminary analysis of the final audit that will take place in the following months."

The inspectors reviewed, among other aspects, the aeronautical legislation, financial resources and budget, hiring of adequate personnel, and the operation of the aerial inspection systems.

The results will be announced in the next month.

However, the visit did not go as expected.

The inspectors found 20 new flaws, various media reports citing government sources.

In the original audit, which earned Mexico a Category 1 status, the FAA identified 28 areas of noncompliance with standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization.

After this last inspection, the AFAC has limited itself to saying that it still has three more technical visits and that it will request the final audit "in the coming months."

The Undersecretary of Transportation, Rogelio Jiménez Pons, admitted last week in an interview with this newspaper that there was a "structural training problem" and "a very important deficit" of some 350 air traffic controllers.

The official is confident that Mexico will return to the highest category in November and that Mexican airlines will already be able to open new routes to the US. The Government is in a hurry for this to happen as soon as possible to expand operations from the recently opened Felipe International Airport Angeles, which barely has a dozen daily flights.

The last time Mexico lost category 1, in 2010, the government took four months to recover it.

The Government hoped to repeat that experience, but a year has passed and the degradation continues.

The pandemic has delayed technical visits and failures reported by the FAA have been difficult to correct.

Mexico has had to modify the sector's law to give AFAC greater autonomy, hire and train 280 inspectors, and raise their salaries by an average of 30%.

As of May, the inspectors still had not received that salary increase.

“It has been a tortuous process,” the director general of AFAC, Carlos Antonio Rodríguez Munguía, told this newspaper that month.

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